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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Gabriel McKay

Ange Postecoglou urges Celtic stars to 'improve on everything' as Champions League showdown looms

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou admits his side must "improve on everything" despite a 2-1 friendly win over Charlton.

The Premiership giants were hugely impressive at times in their second pre-season test in Wales, particularly in a first half which saw Karamoko Dembele and Albian Ajeti get a goal.

After the break though the intensity dropped and Celtic conceded to Connor Washington with the defence wide open.

Their new boss is clearly starting to make his mark in terms of playing style, but was in no mood to get carried away after the narrow win.

Assessing the game Postecoglou told Celtic TV: "It was ok.

"It was another pre-season game, the first half was quite good we controlled the game pretty well (but) second half we got a little bit stretched and chaotic.

"To be fair, for a lot of these guys it's their first game for quite a while but they worked hard and I guess that's the main thing.

"I think this was just mainly some match minutes in the boys' legs, some of them haven't played for quite a while and looked rusty in terms of their touch but that'll come.

"We're working hard at training as well which probably has an effect on them in terms of fatigue for the games but the most important thing for me is they're trying to do the things we're talking about and as long as we do that we can progress."

It's just 10 days until the Champions League showdown with Midtjylland, with Celtic knowing all too well the pitfalls those qualifiers can hold.

Postecoglou was asked what he feels his side need to improve in the next week and a bit and gave a typically straight answer.

He replied: "We've got to improve on everything.

"It's only beginnings for us so all we can focus on is day-to-day a little bit of improvement, there's another game coming up against Bristol City and we'll build toward that.

"Hopefully we'll improve our performance a little bit from today.

"Like I said, they all worked hard. For me what's more important is seeing the intent of the whole team.

"We're trying to keep the ball, we're trying to be aggressive, when we lost the ball I thought we had a better shape - particularly in the first half - in terms of being compact.

"So those are the key things."

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